The following is an excerpt from a speech given to the School Board about a change to the curriculum:
"Because the future will be dominated by technology, we must make four years of computer programming mandatory for all high school students. If our students take these classes, they’ll all be able to get high-paying programming jobs and lead fulfilling lives because software engineers and data scientists have the best job prospects and salaries. Therefore, we must educate our students so they can secure these kinds of jobs. Even if they pursue other careers, programming will still benefit them, given that all industries are becoming more technological."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
Given excerpt from the speech given to the School Board aims at mandating study of computer science for high school students. The given excerpt does make sense, but with some caviets.
One of the statement made that if the course is taken, then the students will get high paying jobs is entirely inaccurate. High paying jobs are very relative with respect to the company the employee is working. If a person is working in one of the top technology-based company, then there is a very high chance that they might earn huge sums of money. Since every technology-based company is not at the top, the stipend of the company will be relative to how well the company is doing in the market.
Another statement that the software engineering and data scientists have the best job prospects and salaries is again, entirely incorrect. Even in tech industry, there are two kinds of employees just like regular jobs i.e. Full-Time Employees and Contractual Employees. If you look carefully, most of the employees in big technology-based companies are either contractual or outsourced from another company in order to meet the requirement of the competing market. And in those employees is a plethora of software engineers and data scietists who are barely meeting the ends. Again, as stated above, it depends on where the employee is going to be employed.
But another statement made that taking the computer programming course would actually benifit them given the industries are becoming more technological is far more benign than other statements. Let us take an example of two men working in a car manufacturing company, 'A' and 'B'. 'A' had taken course of computer programming and 'B' had not. Now, the plant manufacturing the cars had shut down, and both do not have a job. So, in the current job market, there is a better chance for 'A' to get another job as he would be more versatile and is more likely to make the switch from car industry to the tech one.
As stated in the above points, certain key points must be considered into making this long-term decision for the curriculum as it is going to affect many generations in the future.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 367 350
No. of Characters: 1724 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.377 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.698 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.728 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 115 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 87 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.588 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.381 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.471 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.3 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.57 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.123 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, if, look, so, then, well, with respect to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1774.0 2260.96107784 78% => OK
No of words: 367.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.83378746594 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37689890912 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7768969756 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.523160762943 0.468620217663 112% => OK
syllable_count: 555.3 705.55239521 79% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.3195380536 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.352941176 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5882352941 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.29411764706 5.70786347227 58% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 0.0 6.88822355289 0% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.207571887519 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0615525594357 0.0743258471296 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0743046313095 0.0701772020484 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.124538730981 0.128457276422 97% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0964949739069 0.0628817314937 153% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 14.3799401198 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.73 12.5979740519 85% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.73 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 71.0 98.500998004 72% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.